There’s been a lot of negativity flying about of late, what with the fat orange fella sticking his size nines in everything.

Protests, riots, building walls, burning bridges, immigration bans, failed black ops missions. There’s something new to roll your eyes at every day. It’s unsurprising then, that people all over the world are up in arms, (literally and metaphorically), by the Cheeto Chompin’ Chimp’s actions.

It’s not just affecting America. He’s threatening the stability of the entire globe.

With that in mind, I thought it about time we had a set of moral values to live by. Sort of a set of rules, or a code. Commandments, if you will. (I don’t know why anybody hasn’t thought of it before.)

So, here is The Gospel According to Dave.

There are 10 commandments with which to adhere.

First. Thou shalt not kill or hurt anyone.

This applies not just physically, but emotionally, psychologically or spiritually.

Two. Thou shalt not steal.

Actually, if you steal from someone you’re probably hurting them emotionally and psychologically, so I reckon it’s covered in the above.

New, number two. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s Merc. Or his gaff, or his 42″ plasma screen.

Come to think of it, if you’re envious about what someone else has you’re only hurting yourself. So, scrub this one as well.

Why? ‘Cause at least one of the triumvirate is undoubtedly going to get hurt. In all likelihood, all three of you will suffer at some stage. So, again, covered in number one.

Two, (again). Thou shalt not bear false witness.

E.g. Don’t be a lying little get. It’s bad for you and it’s bad for the person you’re lying about. And you invariably get caught out in the end. Number one probably covers this. (A fib is okay. Especially if it stops someone’s feelings getting hurt.)

Secondo. Honour thy father and thy mother.

I reckon your mam would be well upset if she thought you didn’t love her. Having said that, it doesn’t give them the right to mistreat you either. So, as long as they abide by the first commandment, you should abide by it too… no wait, I think we can shoehorn this under number one.

Deux. Thou shalt keep the sabbath holy.

I’m all up for a day off work. Tough one this, as you don’t want to hurt God’s feelings. But, what with shops open 24/7 it’s tricky for some folks. They have to work when the boss tells them or lose their job. I reckon if you take at least one day off a week we should have a bit of wiggle room here. But, at the end of the day, (or week ha ha), it’s covered in the first commandment.

Numero Due. Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.

Jesus wept. Bit petty. Then again, if it hurts His feelings, I reckon you should abide by the first commandment and you should be okay.

Zwei. Thou shalt have no other God but me.

Wooooh, get you.

That’s Hindus screwed then.

Look, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh, a Buddhist or a follower of another religion. Heck, it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in any of them. I’m sure, if you stick by the first principle every one should get along just fine.

So, just to recap, the First and only Commandment is: Thou shalt not kill or hurt anyone.

It was inspired by the Brexit vote and the deep division it created across the country.

It’s a comedy-drama set in a dystopian near future where certain northern city-states are at war with the south. A sort of accidental revolution born out of protest.

The initial raison d’etre for the North was for a fairer society.

However, it soon becomes apparent that some northern leaders want full independence.

This will not stand for a salacious orange-faced president of the UK. And he will stop at nothing to exterminate the rebels’ ever-decreasing strongholds.

Will they succeed in creating their utopia? Or will globilisation prevail?

If you have the time, and inclination, have a peruse and let me know if you think it’s something worth pursuing.

I’ll be posting extracts from the other two novels in the next week or so.

Oh, and please share far and wide on the old social media, if it pleases you.

The Insurrection.

By David Milligan-Croft

Chapter 1
Northern England, sometime in the not-too-distant future.

The country was in a state of chaos after The Insurrection. You could practically draw a line between the mouth of the River Dee in Chester to the Humber estuary in the east, to mark the boundary.

A north-south-divide if you will. With the exception of Cornwall and large swathes of Wales, who had always considered themselves Celtic and unconquered by London. Because that’s what the United Kingdom ultimately was – London. That’s where the seat of power had been for a brace of millennia. And after it had run out of land to conquer in Britain it decided to build some boats and go in search of territories overseas which to ‘liberate’ from their present rulers.

The lands south of our new ‘virtual’ border had decided to stay where the money was. They knew a good thing when they saw it. And that’s pretty much what it all boils down to – money. If you have it – you have power. If you have power – you have friends. Lots of friends. Sycophants who’ll do your bidding regardless of how questionable it is. Until the next highest bidder comes along that is.

The Insurrection wasn’t contained to the United Kingdom. Of course, it ultimately dragged the Republic of Ireland into the mix. While Belfast remained loyal to the capital, Derry and Armagh tried to slip back over the border to rejoin with the south. This brought fierce resistance both from London and the Unionists, the latter of whom had had control over the six counties since Home Rule in 1923.

Unionist atrocities in Derry had compelled militias from Donegal to come to the walled city’s aid. Which ultimately lead to Northern Ireland annexing Donegal. Outcries from Dublin brought the United Nations to the door. But, seeing as though the UK was one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council the chances of sending UN Peacekeepers into the region were zero.

‘Hellions’, as we were dubbed, also had enemies north of the border. Edinburgh had willingly stayed within the Union whilst Aberdeen and Inverness had to be coherced due to the North Sea oil and gas reserves. Glasgow too had to be subdued, presumably due to the proximity of the UK’s only nuclear submarine facility.

It’s not as though we started out wanting independence from the UK. It’s just that we were fed up of poverty. Of the unfair redistribution of wealth. The age old redistribution south. It’s not as though we had much to lose. The north of England had been economically razed to the ground for decades. Mass unemployment, decrepit infrastructure, foodbanks, clothesbanks, shoebanks, furniturebanks. In fact, the only banks we didn’t have were the ones with any money in them.

The Insurrection had largely been contained within the major urban areas of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Newcastle and Sunderland. Areas starved of investment since the government’s withdrawal from the European Union. You see, the reason for our protest against the government wasn’t because we were parochial northerners wanting to unburden ourselves from the shackles of our southern overlords. (In fact, a lot of Londoners who shared our beliefs came up to join our cause.) It was because we wanted to embrace multiculturalism and diversity.

It was this last aspect that gave us a lifeline, as we were supplied with medical aid and weapons by our European allies from both the east and the west. We were pretty self-sufficient on the food front, except when government forces poisoned the farm land with chemical sprays and sank our fishing fleet with their gunboats. Food and fuel became currency. Money was worthless. The only thing we didn’t lack for was weapons. There always seems to be enough weapons in the world with which to wage war.

We didn’t have tanks, fighter jets or helicopter gunships like the government, but we did have something they didn’t have – an idea. An idea of a fairer society. An idea that all the country’s wealth should not be held by the top 1% of the population. And that idea was growing like an interminable cancer south of the border as well. Rebellions and protests sprang up in the Midlands – Birmingham, Stoke, Derby and Leicester all had to be brought to heel.

We didn’t want to fight. We wanted to talk. To come to some accord. But, like William the Conqueror’s ‘Harrying of the North’ in the 11th century, London didn’t. It wanted to subdue and subjugate. Because of The Insurrection, Marshall Law was declared, so all elections were suspended until order had been restored, which effectively made the United Kingdom a right wing dictatorship.

The North’s problem was that it was too fragmented. There was no central leadership. No common goal. The Insurrection had almost happened organically in several cities at the same time. Each with their own agendas and mistrust of each other. And the government wanted to keep it that way so that they didn’t have to talk to anyone. We were just little bands of hellions, anarchists, terrorists, that needed irradicating from the good people of the United Kingdom. But we weren’t terrorists, we were accountants and builders, factory workers and farmers.

We knew that to make the government listen we had to unite. Unite with the idea of the fairer society. And that was what the meeting of the Five Regions was about today. It was being held in secret in Cumbria. If London spies knew that all five regions’ leaders were in one place, The Insurrection could be put to rest in a heartbeat. Or, lack, thereof.
The Five Regions comprised of: the North East; Yorkshire; Greater Manchester; Liverpool, Wirral and Chester and finally; Lancashire and Cumbria.

I am military commander of Greater Manchester, and my name is General Alexander Jefferson Carmichael. But people usually just call me Jeff. I’m not a general in the proper sense of the word as I have no military training, unless you count a spell in the army cadets and several games of paintball in my youth. I am lecturer by trade. If lecturing can be defined as a trade. I taught history of art at Manchester Metropolitan University before The Insurrection. Before I swapped a paintbrush for a Kalashnikov. Before I swapped Guernica for Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

I am accompanying our political leader, Christina Gambretti, a second generation Anglo-Italian, former human rights lawyer. Of all the regional leaders, I admire her the most. She has the most international experience, having previously worked for the UN, Amnesty International and the Refugee Council. If anyone can galvanise the Five Regions to get behind our one goal it is her.

We are travelling at night, by road as all commercial aircraft have been grounded by London. Any private planes or helicopters detected by radar over the no-fly-zone will be intercepted and shot down by RAF interceptors. However, this doesn’t make travelling by road risk free, as the skies are continually patrolled by Apache helicopter gunships bristling with rockets and machine guns and aided by night-vision. So we are travelling by ‘tour bus’. If stopped by enemy forces, we are tourists on our way to the Lake District.

Whilst we do control the large areas from Hadrian’s Wall in the north to the southern border, it is not unheard of for London to land Special Forces units by chopper to intercept any vehicles they deem suspicious. Or, indeed, to carry out covert strikes on valuable assets, such as reservoirs and energy facilities. Or even kidnappings. SK4 security services, a private company that took over from the police force, are believed to be responsible for abductions of prominent politicians, activists and dissidents who are never seen or heard from again.

Our areas of influence are dwindling by the week. Only yesterday, Crewe defected back over the Cheshire border to rejoin the UK. The government makes a song and dance about it on the media, but you never see what has become of the political leaders or the Hellion Militia. Just lots of images of the public with shiny happy faces being embraced by our orange-faced El Presidente.

The rendezvous was arranged in the Lake District because of in-fighting between the various regions. Manchester would not meet in Liverpool, Newcastle would not go to Sunderland, Leeds wouldn’t entertain the idea of going to Manchester. And, Yorkshire as a whole, would tend not to want to go anywhere outside of its borders. Most of these objections originated from old sporting rivalries rather than political differences, which made it all the more frustrating getting all the factions to be taken seriously.

We had booked a conference room in a Kendal hotel under the pretext of a sales conference. We were on pretty safe ground up there with a partisan crowd. Though we would have to sweep for listening devices and the like. And my security detail would have to keep a low profile. I had deliberately chosen three men and three women so that they could easily pass as couples wandering the grounds.

Each of the Five Regions was bringing two delegates, one political, one military. In the hope of us thrashing out a cohesive and unified plan militarily and politically.

Christina was very good at this. She would go along with a particular plan or suggestion, then take people aside individually and propose something else. Perhaps an amendment or two. Or, even something completely different.

‘What? You want an unfair society instead?’

She smirked. ‘No, we have that already. I was thinking that it’s not really about us coming together to share common ground. It’s the fact we’re completely different types of peoples, with different values. We don’t like what they represent and they certainly don’t like what we represent.’

‘You’re suggesting full independence for the North of England?’

She shrugged her slender shoulders and tucked a slither of auburn hair behind her ear.

Christina eyed me contemptuously. ‘You get my point,’ she said flatly. ‘Besides, isn’t that what we’ve really wanted all along?’

I looked out of the coach window as rain streaked diagonally. Was that what we really wanted? I wondered. When I’d worked abroad in my youth, I had often found that when I told people I was from Britain, or England, they eyed me with caution, or even suspicion. But when I told people I was from Manchester they immediately brightened and opened with, ‘Ah, Manchester United!’

Northerners were certainly treated differently in some countries. Almost as though we were as oppressed as some of Britain’s former colonies. I particularly found this in Ireland and Australia.

‘What about the NHS and the welfare state?’ I asked.

‘We’d still have those,’ she said.

‘How’d we pay for it?’

‘Same as we do now, through taxes.’

‘How’d we pay to rebuild the infrastructure?’ Our cities had become fortresses and our infrastructure had largely been pulverised by the enemy.

‘EU subsidies,’ she smiled.

‘Army and airforce bases?’

‘Negotiation.’

When we had rebelled against the appalling atrocities and brutal overuse of force by SK4 Security, the army had been called in and had disobeyed direct orders to open fire on their own citizens. Local army units were subsequently confined to barracks. Then, when national regiments were drafted in, and they also refused. The army left it up to the government and local law enforcement, which was primarily owned by members of the government anyway. The police force had been outsourced to SK4 Security Services five years previously.

You could easily see why the generals, (the proper ones, that is), wanted nothing to do with instigating a civil war. After all, they swore allegiance to the Queen, not a despotic, orange dictator with a penchant for underage girls.

Chapter 2.

EL PRESIDENTE

Please feel free to point out any typos, punctuation and grammatical errors. It’s a first draft and these things happen no matter how many times I proofread it. I won’t be offended.In fact, I’ll be pleased!

I couldn’t possibly pick just one, so here are a few to salivate over. There’s something for everyone.

The Mower

by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

This be the Verse

by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Suspenders

by Raymond Carver

Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and
I was going to have to wear suspenders to school
next day. Nobody wore suspenders to second grade,
or any other grade for that matter. She said,
You’ll wear them or else I’ll use them on you. I don’t want any more trouble. My dad said something then. He
was in the bed that took up most of the room in the cabin
where we lived. He asked if we could be quiet and settle this
in the morning. Didn’t he have to go in early to work in
the morning? He asked if I’d bring him
a glass of water. It’s all that whiskey he drank, Mom said. He’s
dehydrated.

I went to the sink and, I don’t know why, brought him
a glass of soapy dishwater. He drank it and said, That sure
tasted funny, son. Where’d this water come from?
Out of the sink, I said.
I thought you loved your dad, Mom said.
I do, I do, I said, and went over to the sink and dipped a glass
into the soapy water and drank off two glasses just
to show them. I love Dad, I said.
Still, I thought I was going to be sick then and there. Mom said,
I’d be ashamed of myself if I was you. I can’t believe you’d
do your dad that way. And, by God, you’re going to wear those
suspenders tomorrow, or else. I’ll snatch you bald-headed if you
give me any trouble in the morning. I don’t want to wear
suspenders,
I said. You’re going to wear suspenders, she said. And with that
she took the suspenders and began to whip me around the bare legs
while I danced in the room and cried. My dad
yelled at us to stop, for God’s sake, stop. His head was killing him,
and he was sick at his stomach from soapy dishwater
besides. That’s thanks to this one, Mom said. It was then somebody
began to pound on the wall of the cabin next to ours. At first it
sounded like it was a fist–boom-boom-boom–and then
whoever it was switched to a mop or a broom
handle. For Christ’s sake, go to bed over there! somebody yelled.
Knock it off! And we did. We turned out the lights and
got into our beds and became quiet. The quiet that comes to a house
where nobody can sleep.

Gravy

by Raymond Carver

No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.”

Hummingbird

by Raymond Carver

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird”,
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

Teleport Memory

by Patrick Chapman

Eighteen winters on, I find your jet-black

hold-up in my box of old remarkables,

the rubber garter still with spring in it.

I drape the stocking long on the bed

and try to imagine your pale slender leg

filling it toe to knee to thigh and beyond

in a matter transmitter reconstitution

of you with a physical copy that holds

your consciousness, your memories,

your tenderness, your wit still dry –

while out in the real, the original you

has surely diverged in directions I can’t

follow: some of your people passed on;

you a mother, an aunt or alone; and every

cell in your body, twice overwritten.

If that you can bear think of me

it may be with disdain for who I was

at the end but listen, my old love,

he has been replaced so many times –

no longer that young cripple who,

out of repression and pain, cracked

your heart and in its fracture fatally

punctured his own. So far undone is he

that even teleport could never bring us home.

Alone with Everybody

by Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and

sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too

much

and nobody finds the

one

but keep

looking

crawling in and out

of beds.

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

there’s no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

nobody ever finds

the one.

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

EDGE

by Sylvia Plath

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

The Causes

by Jorge Luis Borges

The sunsets and the generations
The days and none was first.
The freshness of water in Adam’s
Throat. Orderly paradise.
The eye deciphering the darkness.
The love of wolves at dawn.
The word. The hexameter. The mirror.
The Tower of Babel and pride.
The moon which the Chaldeans gazed at.
The uncountable sands of the Ganges.
Chuang Tzu and the butterfly that dreams him.
The golden apples on the islands.
The steps in the wandering labyrinth.
Penelope’s infinite tapestry.
The circular time of the Stoics.
The coin in the mouth of the dead man.
The sword’s weight on the scale.
Each drop of water in the water clock.
The eagles, the memorable days, the legions.
Caesar on the morning of Pharsalus.
The shadow of crosses over the earth.
The chess and algebra of the Persians.
The footprints of long migration.
The sword’s conquest of kingdom’s.
The relentless compass. The open sea.
The clock echoing in the memory.
The king executed by the ax.
The incalculable dust that was armies.
The voice of the nightingale in Denmark.
The calligrapher’s meticulous line.
The suicide’s face in the mirror.
The gambler’s card. Greedy gold.
The forms of a cloud in the desert.
Every arabesque in the kaleidoscope.
Each regret and each tear.
All those things were made perfectly clear
So our hands could meet.

I am so sorry, I have some bad news. It’s not you. It’s not even me – It’s them!

And, by ‘them’, I mean the 52% who voted to leave the European Union.

I guess they’ll say I’m just a sore loser and that democracy won the day. But it’s hard to see it as democracy when their decision making was based on a litany of untruths and fear.

You see, I was one of the 48% that wanted to stay with you, because I love you. I’m a complete Europhile. I love your rich, colourful, cultural diversity. I also love the fact that we can come and go as we please. Not just for holidays, but for work or to study.

And it’s that cultural diversity that leads to understanding, respect, tolerance and unity.

The world needs fewer borders, not more.

Sure, it’s not always been plain sailing and we’ve had our ups and downs. But I think we’ve had more ups than downs over the years, don’t you think? You’ve let us keep our own currency and border controls. And you’ve made the prices of things much cheaper. And made sure workers’ rights have been protected.

You’ve been very kind and patient with us these past few months while we’ve tried to make up our minds whether or not to dump you.

The problem was, the Vote Leave campaign told so many whopping big lies about the economy and immigration that they managed to get 52% of people to believe them.

Only this morning have they reneged on one promise to spend £350 million pounds a week on the NHS! I bet the Vote Leavers feel like a right bunch of suckers right now.

I have to be honest, and say that the Vote Remain campaign didn’t cover itself in glory either.

A lot of folks over here are saying that the people who voted leave are ‘stupid’. But they’re not, are they? They were just lied to on a monumental scale. The fact is, the Vote Leave campaigners played on people’s fears. They managed to convince them that all the problems we’ve been having these past few years are the fault of the EU and immigrants rather than the financial crash of 2008 and Tory austerity measures.

Unfortunately, they’ll soon find out that they were spoon fed a pack of lies.

The other big problem is that a lot of people in England are becoming ever more racist. They don’t want you ‘foreigners’ coming to our country and nicking our jobs and sponging off our welfare system.

But you don’t do that, do you? You create £6 billion worth of wealth for the UK economy. And withdraw a paltry few hundred million in welfare by comparison.

All the clever people wanted us to stay with you. People like Stephen Hawking, Richard Branson, Lord Sugar and Posh & Becks. (Maybe we should have got someone from the Big Brother house or Geordie Shore to be a spokesperson instead.) Whereas, all the right-wing scaremongers such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Katie Hopkins wanted us to leave. And, because people are becoming more and more right wing, they believed in the harbingers of fear, hate, division and intolerance.

Maybe there is a way for us to stay together. Me and you, that is. Not Britain, it’s too late for that. And, the irony is, the ‘Great Britain’ Vote Leavers so desperately coveted will probably lead to it being dismantled. (Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain with you.)

Poor-little-England will have to take on the world single-handed. It’ll build a grand new fleet of galleons made from the finest spruce and oak. England shall once again, rule the waves, sail the seven seas and plunder, rape and subjugate all in its path!

Yes, you’re reading that right. And no, you don’t need to go to Specsavers.

Actually, it’s 51% off. But let’s not quibble.

From tomorrow, (Tuesday 24th May), my second novel, Peripheral Visionwill be available for only 99p!

I know, I know, I’m practically giving it away. What can you get for 99p these days, eh?

I’ll tell you what – fuck all. (Well, apart from my book, of course.) Actually, you could probably get a bag of Monster Munch and a Sherbert Dip-Dab, but I digress…

Here’s the blurby bit:

After being blinded in one eye by his abusive father, Peripheral Vision tells the story of 11-year-old Danny Kane growing up in 1970s northern England. His violent upbringing results in his descent into a life of drugs and crime. As he reaches adulthood he realises that the only way out of his spiralling slide into perdition is to find the one thing that he treasured most – his childhood friend, Sally, who was taken into care after the death of her mother. Can the search for his long-lost love lead to Danny’s redemption?

Peripheral Vision explores themes such as child abuse, domestic violence, drug abuse and gang crime. It’s a gritty coming-of-age drama that pulls no punches. It’s even been compared to Donna Tartt – which is a huge honour, as I’m a big fan of her work.